The Lamar City Council approved the purchase of three new trucks for the Lamar Police Department during its Monday, Feb. 8, meeting.

Police Chief Kyle Miller said the purchase will be made through a lease agreement with Valley National Bank.

The department will purchase two two-wheel-drive trucks and one four-wheel drive extended cab truck, made by Dodge.

The total cost will be $61,574.

Miller said his plan is to take the Chevy Tahoes out of the detective unit because they are four-wheel drive vehicles and would be better suited for the street.

"Two of the pickups will be for investigations, with some kind of cover on the back of them and the four-wheel drive extended cab will be placed on patrol," he said.

Miller said the department has replaced one K9 unit.

"We have one that needs to get to the veterinarian because his hips are starting to go bad, so I don't know if we are going to replace that K9," he said. "That's something we are going to look at in the near future."

He said both animal control units are 2013 vehicles.

City Treasurer Kristin McCrea said the lease amount has been included in the 2016 budget.

"We didn't include the full purchase amount," she said.

City Administrator John Sutherland said a dollar amount was included in the budget.

"He actually originally thought we would only be able to afford two, but it turns out by good, hard work, he was able to squeeze a third one in there," he said. "I'm impressed."

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The vehicles will come from the state bid.

"The Dodge's are cheaper," Miller said.

Councilman Kirk Crespin said the expense will be for the maintenance and upkeep of the vehicles.

"I think we are going to see our maintenance costs go down because we have more vehicles to use," Miller said. "We won't be putting more miles on our cars, so we roughly put 20,000 miles on the ones for patrol with two people in them."

By cutting the miles in half by having more vehicles, he said, they will last longer and the maintenance cost will go down.

"If we have one car that's constantly having problems, we can determine why that car is having problems rather than playing musical cars with two or three people," he said.

Sutherland said when multiple people drive the same vehicle nobody takes ownership.

"You end up with finger-pointing," he said. "We think this is going to improve the wear-and-tear on the vehicle when you assign it to an individual officer," he said.

"All these expenses are coming up, yet we're buying new cars all the time," he said. "It's important that we are spending wisely."

Miller said the pickups are half the cost of an SUV.

"They're cheaper than cars," Miller said.

The cars range between $30,000 and $35,000, he said, and the trucks meet the special service specifications for the department.

Sutherland said he believes the city has identified a fire truck.

"The constraints on this are that we only have so much space in the bay down here and there's only so much room at the top," he said.

The city has been only buying trucks that fit the space, he said, which made the selection difficult.

The city is moving forward with a new vehicle that's a demo.

"We think we can get it financed and make all the budget payments," he said. "We applied for a DOLA (Department of Local Affairs) tier two grant for 50 percent of it . That brings it down to $320,000."

If they finance that, Sutherland said the way it has been budgeted they can make installment payments on the truck.

"We haven't gotten to a place yet where we are ready to bring it to council," he said.

Sutherland noted that lease payments for the police vehicles will be made at the end of the year.

"The city will be driving those without paying for a year," he said.

Crespin said they will still be paying the interest.

"It's all figured in," Sutherland said.

Sutherland said it would take three vehicles to achieve a full rotation for police cars and didn't think they would make it this year.

"With there prices, we weren't going g to get there but we came into the new year with a new state bid and Kyle went through the bid and said I can get pickup trucks and cars," he said. "He put it together and we and we can do three."

The purchase completes the rotation.

"We'll be able to assign one person to one car," Miller said.

The action was approved with a split vote as Mayor Roger Stagner voted against the purchase.

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